


Strength of Strings

by Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Fluff, M/M, WAFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/pseuds/Ryo%20Hoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Notes that roll on winds with swirling wings</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Brings me words that are not the strength of strings</i>
</p><p>Karkat is trying this cuddling-in-the-sleeping-pile thing with John and it's...actually rather nice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength of Strings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asuka Kureru (Askerian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/gifts).



> Written for Asuka Kureru, hope this cheers you up!
> 
> Title comes from [Strength of Strings](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFoLT-GuRno); my favorite version is not the original by Gene Clark but the This Mortal Coil cover.

Karkat relaxed into the weird/not-weird thing the humans kept calling a sleeping pile—he could understand why they'd like to sleep in it, if you didn't have to worry about having HorrorTerrors talking to you in your sleep it would be a really _nice_ place to sleep.  He was pretty certain that 'sleeping pile' wasn't really their word for it, though, given how John's face had taken that cute little worried something-off frown after the first time somebody else had mentioned it.  The translator grubs were jury-rigged tech, some sort of interrupt in the speech-processing regions of the thinkpan—the details were full of highblood medical terminology that he didn't care to bother remembering—that hijacked some non-troll's speech apparatus into speaking a proper language and grocking it, sort of.

At any rate it had done a pretty decent job of letting him court John—he hadn't gotten the details, but he was pretty certain that humans considered sharing a _sleeping_ pile something that was flushed, instead of piles being pale.  Maybe because it was a sleeping pile?  They seemed to prefer forming piles from each other and furniture for themselves and they seemed to have an entire extra quadrant of Lusussitude which he supposed was sort of an extra pale version of Moirallegiance _and_ it seemed like the rules were totally different and you could have _more_ than one person in a human quadrant as long as they got along and…

Right now?  This totally didn't bother him.  He was even feeling surprisingly willing to consider maybe seeing if he could try it out.  If this cuddly thing John was doing right now was something _all_ humans did in sleeping piles with their matesprits…  The idea of getting to be in a tangle of limbs just plain appealed right now and…

It took being truly happy for Karkat to come close to admitting that he missed the vague grubhood memories of getting to be part of a warmth-pile with other grubs purring contentedly (warm-warm-full-safe- _warm_ ) never mind that all trolls did, really.  Humans might not know how to purr (right now he was not going to admit they might not be _able_ to) but simply having a warm body snuggled against his warm fabric pulled over them…fuck troll romance it was the closest he'd ever felt to totally content and happy since the trials and this was awesome.

He even had a sleepy trusting John, slim muscled body tucked close against his still short one, despite being nearly an adult, his eyes even having already taken his adult color.  His purr got a little louder—he might be too shy to when anybody outside his quadrants might hear to make little wriggler noises, even if it wasn't really a problem, especially in redrom, but they were in John's respiteblock in his sleeping pile.

Alright, so he definitely would be going into an utter panic if another body was there with him, he wasn't ready for that even as a purely redrom pile, sandwiched between his flushed and pale quadrants and the thought had him feeling like all the blood in his body was rushing to his cheeks all of it…

John shifted a little, nose brushing up and against his cheek as he murmured something garbled by sleep and implant—but even if the tone hadn't made it clear it was a shoosh the so painfully red brush of lips against his own did.  Yeah, alright, totally calm, not freaked out.  Just…sharing his matesprit's sleeping pile, wasn't even like they were naked though only boxers was and humans had such _thin_ skin…

The next set of murmured words were a bit more intelligible, John was more awake now, the translator grub working more smoothly.  Karkat shifted slightly, curious, as John wriggled a little, skin brushing against bare skin with embarrassing wonderful intimacy and…

He was trying to do something with the grub sitting on the elevated platform he'd put beside the sleeping pile, the small music one he'd seen Sollux teaching John about before that was sitting grubbishly beside John's glasses.

…John fumbling blindly was too fucking pitiful if they were going to be doing anything…yeah, Karkat was happy with cuddles, cuddles were awesome, cuddles with somebody other than his moirail were something he really fucking enjoyed and he was in no hurry whatsoever.

He shifted—with a little regret as the layers of warm fabric slid down a little, exposing more skin to the air—and succeeded in not thinking too much about things he was wanting to wait a bit longer to do (nervous? no not at all, it was romance really honest truly stop looking at him so skeptically) as his chest slid against John's back, chin on his shoulder, and fu…no, no, don't think that, especially when trying to not think about what is against his bone bulge.

“Let me,” he murmured softly—yes f…yeahnolet'snotgothere he _did_ too have the ability to lower his voice, it wasn't romantic to yell in your matesprit's or moirail's ear and he was going to be the most romantic troll ever.  It was going to be him.

(That his 'softly' was a normal person's 'indoor voice' is to be ignored on pain of having everybody suddenly falling very deeply in platonic hate with you for the resulting screaming rant.)

John relaxed—which was good and bad, really, he was looking forward to going back to just sleepy snuggles in John's pile—and let Karkat, with his better vision and greater experience with music grubs start it playing before gently pulling John back into the pile because _hell fucking yes cuddles_.

He decided to take the human's laugh as simply a sign that he agreed.  Now was not the time to have a ragegasm.  Only cuddles now.

…wait.  He didn't recognize the piece and he knew Sollux liked computer-generated music (and bees) so John couldn't have gotten a recording of a musical hammered-strings-box doing a solo performance from Sollux, nobody there listened to that sort of thing, and… _oh_.

It was recorded for him.

He had the most romantic flushed quadrant ever.  It was him.  (And Karkat was happy to just lie there, warm and tangled with John beneath the upper fabric layers of the sleeping platform, trying but not able to keep his delighted purr—hear, o world, a troll is really fucking happy with you—quiet.)

**Author's Note:**

> The translation grubs are, well, mechanical translators, with many of the flaws of such. It inserts itself between 'input/output' and semantic processing of language; at least in Terran animals, this occurs in different areas of the brain. The grubs can't make you be able to write Alternian, and your spoken will sound sort of like you are reciting something you learned phonetically. Your Alternian will have weird neologisms and go mugging your native language for vocabulary. Basically? It's Troll Google Translate or Troll Bablefish but with better grammar.
> 
> If you use one long enough you can actually start sounding like a native speaker, and pick up the prosody—thankfully Alternian is very tolerant of variation here!—but you'll stop sounding like a harmless foreigner.


End file.
